Now, Mrs Incredible
by littlesoprano
Summary: Helen explains to Robert why her new Super name doesn't bother her one bit. Companion piece to Formerly, Elastigirl, but stands alone.


Disclaimer: All characters belong to Pixar. This is a not-for-profit work.

Now, Mrs. Incredible

'…_the Underminer caused no causalities as he was thwarted immediately by Mr. Incredible and his wife Mrs. Incredible, whom experts have now determined is indeed the famed pre-ban Super, Elastigirl.'_

Bob Parr blinked through bleary eyes at the television, barely able to focus on the images for the absolutely leaden state of his eyelids. Giving up, he turned it off. He was exhausted. Between the rush of getting ready for the track meet, the battle with the Underminer, and the press afterward, it had been a long day. The Underminer had been taken down relatively quickly, it had been a tough fight. Bob didn't remember getting this fatigued during the old days, but, he figured a bit ruefully, he wasn't as young as he used to be. He also hadn't had the mental stresses of worrying over his family's safety. Now, he was looking forward mightily to a satisfied sleep in his deep, soft, warm bed. Helen had retired already, no doubt as weary as he. She'd fought splendidly, of course, making him realize all over again how much he'd missed seeing her in action. He grinned, replaying images in his mind. If both of them weren't so absolutely dead-tired…

To his surprise the bedside lamp in their room was still on when he came in, and he quickly got ready for bed. Sliding between the sheets, he was further surprised to find that she was still awake, and he felt her press back against him as his arm twined over her protectively. Recently, their sleep positions had changed. Before, she'd lain atop him, sprawled face-down, long limbs akimbo. On too many nights since the Super ban, they'd slept on opposite sides of the bed entirely, the chill of her cold anger and frustration reaching him from across the comforter. Thankfully, there'd been just as many nights when they'd fallen asleep in an absolute tangle-- literally, considering the woman in question was the one and only Elastigirl. Tonight he marveled, as he had many a time, at how small she was in his arms (though at 5'8 she was hardly petite,) yet how strong. They were a perfect fit, a perfect match.

"How was the news, honey?" she asked him, voice slow and sleepy-mild.

"Good," he replied. "Not much new from the 6 o' clock, really. Though there _was_ some nice footage of a Super named Mrs. Incredible…"

He'd meant it as a flirting tease, but as soon as the words had left his mouth they gave him pause. He reached to turn off the lamp, then changed his mind and settled back down in the mattress. "Does it bother you, sweetie?" he asked seriously after a bit of a moment.

"Does what bother me?" Helen's words were muffled, a little, by the covers that were up about her shoulders. She was very warm and very comfortable-- not expecting any kind of deep conversation.

"Everyone's got it figured out that Mrs. Incredible is Elastigirl from the old days, but the news, the reporters, the papers-- they're pretty much all calling you Mrs. Incredible now. And your new suit-- it's got my Super logo on it-- my name, sort of-- not Elastigirl's…"

Helen tipped back her head so she could meet his eyes in the semi-dark. "I already took your name, remember?" she reminded him with a poignant look. She smiled, but it was more to herself than him. She flashed back, just then, to her old self, to those interviews she used to give. _'Settle down, are you kidding?'_ She'd been the one who didn't want to be tied down, while Robert had cherished the idea of having a family to nurture.

Flipping over onto her back and bringing them face-to-face, she shot him a very dry smile. "Besides-- the elastic part is still true, but do I look like a girl anymore?"

Bob didn't need his Super danger-sense to know not to come anywhere near touching _that_ line. The truth, though, was that she was just as beautiful and desirable to him now as then, whether she was in a Super suit or in her sensible button-downs and capris. If he could only find a way to say all of that without completely stepping on his own tongue…

Helen spared him. "Do you miss her?"

"Who?"

"Elastigirl?"

For a moment, his brow furrowed. "How could I miss her when she's right here?" he questioned, and kissed the tip of her nose.

"Is she?" Helen asked quietly. When he didn't reply, she went on quickly, explaining. "I mean… during all those years when we were underground, there were days when I thought I'd shoved the Super part of myself so far back inside that it wouldn't come back even if I tried. On other days it was so close, and I knew that… I knew that I was still Elastigirl, somewhere in there. Then on the base at Nomanisan, it all just came… _rushing back_, like it was never gone at all."

"Right down to the confident little smirk," Bob teased affectionately.

"Smirk and all," she agreed. "It felt like the old days, you know? Only-- not. Sure, I'm still Elastigirl, but she wouldn't exactly be running back to make sure her kids were okay, or stopping by the supermarket after a fight because she was out of strained carrots."

"No, probably not," he laughed.

Helen's features grew very soft as her mind turned backward. "Remember what we were like, in the old days? We faced death every day, but we were so… _carefree_. Yeah, there was responsibility, but so much of it was just excitement. It was all glory and swinging from the rooftops…"

"We could still do that," Bob put in, giving her a little squeeze. "Put on the suits, swing from some rooftops. Playful banter," he suggested with a very appealing low growl. Playful banter had accompanied their relationship straight through their 15-year marriage and had hit new heights now that their lives were back as they should be. Dash made elaborate protestations of being, as he put it, 'grossed out' by their frequent gestures of affection and flirting.

Banter aside, Robert didn't want Helen to think he was diverting away from the serious topic at hand. He waited a moment, sobered. "What we have now is even better than the old days-- being married, our kids, our _family_. We don't have to do it alone. We were carefree back then, and independent-- but if we hadn't met one another, we might have been so independent that we'd have ended up lonely for the rest of our lives." He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers before continuing. "What _I _have now is better," he finished, looking directly at her.

If it weren't for the fact that Bob had expressed these thoughts multiple times since the Syndrome incident, she might have jumped out of the bed and cheered (or pounced on him, or both)-- for those words were exactly what she had been longing to hear from him for the better part of their post-ban marriage. As it was, she only sighed contentedly. "Do you remember, at our wedding, how I told you you'd have to be more than Mr. Incredible?"

"Not my most vivid memory of the evening," he grinned, "but yes."

"Well, it was true, but it went both ways. I had to be more than Elastigirl, too. I'd thought I was prepared for that. Then the ban came along, and instead of trying to be more than her, I just _stopped_ being her. Or, I tried-- but I couldn't, not all the way." She had already explained all of this to him after returning home from Nomanisan, and he'd been shocked to know how closely--though less overwhelming and certainly more repressed-- her feelings had matched his all those years. Now, he simply nodded to show her he still understood. In a way, she'd realized since that he'd always understood, at least some of it. He'd known she was still a Super at heart, no matter how far she buried the fact.

For Robert, his entire identity as a person-- father, husband-- was tied up in his Super life-- or it had been before the 'death' of his wife and children. He would have gladly given up his powers to save them, to bring them back, he'd told her fervently. While it was true that all Supers had two sides, two identities-- 'normal' and Super-- before the ban there hadn't been such a hard and definite line between the two. Robert Parr and Mr. Incredible may have lived in different situations, but inside and personality-wise they were one and the same. It had been the same with Helen Truax and Elastigirl. When the ban took effect she'd taken the two identities and tried to push them as far apart as she could. She became Helen Parr, mother and housewife, with a remnant of the Elastigirl she once was dormant and pushed away inside.

Helen continued. "But when I put on that new suit and went after you, I became someone different-- and still the same." The two parts of herself combined into… Mrs. Incredible. Her truest, whole self. Her whole was infinitely stronger than its two parts, just as Mr. and Mrs. Incredible were infinitely stronger than Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl, separate, could have ever been. "I became that someone who is more than Elastigirl-- and more than Helen. The best of both. And if they want to call that Mrs. Incredible-- then that's fine with me."

Having said what needed to be said with an air of finality to the conversation, Helen sank once again into the warm covers and closed her eyes, pulling Robert's arm comfortably around her again. One of her arms stretched out, letting her click off the light. There was a beat.

"Besides, it's not like they don't _know_ I'm Elastigirl," she added, and even though he couldn't see her, Bob just knew she wore that curve-lipped, self-satisfied smirk that he had fallen in love with, and still loved.

"Absolutely," he agreed, then yawned and pulled the covers back up over them again. There was another longish silence, and he wondered if she'd dropped off to sleep.

"Honey?" Helen's voice came though the dark room.

"Mmm-hmm?" he replied, finally sounding a bit sleepy.

"About the swinging from the rooftops…"

"Yeah?" All traces of sleepiness completely disappeared.

"Get a sitter for tomorrow night. You've got yourself a date, _Mr. _Incredible."


End file.
